Atupele tours green village housing project

Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Atupele Muluzi Tuesday toured the green village housing project.

The project which is run by the Sustainable Urban Land and Shelter Development (SULSDEC), the company is developing a new urban village near Area 49 new shire in Lilongwe.

Speaking to the journalist, the Minister said it was a good development to see that the private sector is coming in to help the government in making sure that people have shelter and land.

“It’s a good initiative for the private sector to come up with this as it will also help unplanned slum settlements. This place will be proper planned and a secure environment for the communities who will be settling here,” said Muluzi.

He said that the bill passed in parliament to have well planned houses not only in urban areas but also in rural areas for the bringing up social and economic development of the country.

“The private sector is complementing the government effort to develop and have planned slum areas and the government through Malawi housing corporation is building houses and they is also a programme of Malata and cement subsidy all this is to make sure that people have place to live,” explained Muluzi.

He added that with the rapid growing population in the country, this initiative by the private sector will encourage other developers to come in and help in developing the slum areas to have safe and secured settlements in the country.

SULSDEC chief executive officer Nicholson Kumwenda said the company will ensure that all Malawians live in adequate housing located in safe, secure and decent urban communities.

“The company acquires land, services it by developing road networks, installation of water and electricity and the company further manages construction of houses at large scale on the land and it also allocates plots to Malawian households to build their houses,” said Kumwenda.

He further said the company’s goal is not only to ensure access to land for housing development but also to create functional well planned and orderly developed habitat, hence prevent further growth of slum settlements.

SULSDEC Green village is the largest slum prevention project in Malawi driven by the private sector and once completed it is expected to accommodate over 3,000 households.